Monday, May 22, 2006

Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch have a nickname for newspaper the New York Times, which they prefer to call “the New Duranty Times” owing to what they perceive as its poor coverage of the global Islamic jihad. The name, of course, comes from Walter Duranty, former Pulitzer Prize winner and Moscow correspondent for The New York Times in the 1930s. Duranty repeatedly denied the existence of a Ukrainian famine in 1932–33. In an article in NYT, August 24 1933, he claimed “any report of a famine is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda,” while millions of people were dying. According to Spencer and Fitzgerald, this spirit of denial seems to be alive and well at the NYT 70 years later.

In the New York Times May 10, 2006, Alan Cowell wrote an article from Sweden entitled “An Economy With Safety Features, Sort of Like a Volvo.” Now, in all fairness, Mr. Cowell does mention potential problems in Sweden, not the least that massive immigration is rapidly changing what was once a very ethnically homogeneous nation state. “Up to 10 years ago it was very homogeneous as a country. Everything was very alike. Up until then all Swedes looked the same; almost thought the same. Because we are all so equal, we can share the pain of the problems.” However, at the same time Cowell indicates that Scandinavia may need even more immigration to finance its welfare state, and quotes a report by the European Policy Center, a research institute in Brussels, saying that “Scandinavia’s “negative approach towards immigration” might “represent the biggest threat to the long-term survival” of the Nordic model, since Scandinavian economies need “a constant flux of foreign talent and workers in general.” Still, despite these objections, Cowell concludes that “the economy prospers — even though taxes here remain high and big government administers cradle-to-grave social programs that absorb more than half of the national output” and that “compared with some other parts of Europe, there is still some optimism here.” This is sloppy journalism. If Cowell had done anything more than scratching the surface, he would have found that Europe is in the midst of massive waves of Muslim immigration that are in the process of transforming the continent into a post-Western entity some call “Eurabia.” Sweden is one of the leading countries in this process, quite possibly the worst of them all, and yet freedom of speech in debating these topics in public has become de facto so curtailed that one could question whether Sweden in 2006 is still a functioning democracy.

Cowell states that “Sweden’s official unemployment rate of 4.8 percent, many economists say, is distorted by the omission of people in government-financed retraining programs. The labor unions calculate the real figure at closer to 8 percent.” In fact, some Swedes believe that the real unemployment rate may be three times as big as even this higher estimate. Hans Karlsson, a leftwing heavyweight, concluded that true unemployment was more in the ballpark of 20-25%, not 5% as the government was claiming. Even the official numbers show that the Swedish economic model is in serious trouble. Young adults born in the 1980’s have an appreciably lower standard of living in Sweden than older generations. We can already see some major cracks in the Swedish welfare state. Sweden is struggling to pay the bills for the tens of thousands of workers on long-term disability and an expanding group of young people leaving the workforce altogether on so-called “early retirement.” 500,000 people are on early retirement in Sweden today, 68,000 of whom are between the ages of 20 and 40. “If the sick-leave levels in Sweden really were an indicator of how sick we are, we would be facing a plague here,” as one commentator put it.

High unemployment in Sweden will be tackled by creating more public sector jobs, even if that means breaking the government’s spending limits. That was the message from Göran Persson, Swedish Social Democratic prime minister. The jobs will be targeted mainly at young people and the long-term unemployed. They will be given jobs in government agencies, mainly doing desk jobs or looking after old people. Proposals that were highlighted by Persson included using the long-term unemployed to “help old people to hang curtains.”

Johnny Munkhammar of Timbro, a free market think-tank of Swedish Enterprise, explains that the Scandinavian model is not all it’s cracked up to be. Sweden had the second highest growth rate in the world from 1890 to 1950, but since the tax rate rose from 20 % in 1950 to 50 % in 1980 it had fallen behind. For example, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Sweden was the fourth richest country per capita in the world in 1970 whereas now it is down to number 14, and falling. Maybe the welfare state only seemed to be a success in Scandinavia because these nations had been dynamic capitalist countries prior to this, ethnically homogeneous and based upon a Protestant work ethic. While this legacy kept the welfare system afloat for some time, it is now rapidly being eroded.

More immigrants should be allowed into Sweden in order to safeguard the welfare system. That’s the view of Pär Nuder, Sweden’s finance minister. However, in reality estimates indicate that immigration costs Sweden at least 40 to 50 billion Swedish kroner every year, probably several hundred billions, and has greatly contributed to bringing the Swedish welfare state to the brink of bankruptcy. An estimated cost of immigration of 225 billion Swedish kroner in 2004, which is not unlikely, would equal 17.5% of Sweden’s tax income that year, a heavy burden in a country where the overall tax burden between 1990 and 2005 on average was 61%, almost one and a half times the OECD average.

In neighboring Denmark, right-wing politicians are already debating the threat of a spillover of immigrant “welfare tourists,” should the Swedish system collapse. At the same time, statistics indicate that native Scandinavians will become a minority in their own countries within a couple of generations, if the current immigration trends continue. One thousand years ago Scandinavians were the barbarians of Europe, spreading fear and extracting “Danegeld” from their more civilized neighbors. In the 21st century Scandinavians are peaceful and soft-spoken, and the roles seem to have been reversed with certain newly arrived immigrants. While their political elites insist that immigration is “good for the economy,” Scandinavians are in reality funding their own colonization. Although the cost of welfare is significant, it pales in comparison to the price paid through rapidly declining social harmony and increasing insecurity caused by Muslim immigration. Some of the increase in insecurity is due to the rise of mafia groups and organized crime, but most is mainly due to terror threats and intimidation of critics of Islam and Muslim immigration.

Children in the Swedish city of Gothenburg are to become the first in the world to be given the vote in a referendum. Two official referenda will be held in which only children between 5 and 12 will be eligible to vote. The results of the polls will decide two local issues - the appearance of a new tram and the design of a new library card. A country that even gives the vote to 5-year-old children must be a model of democracy, right? Well, not necessarily, if the political elites treat the rest of the population as children, too. Jens Orback, Democracy Minister in the Social Democratic government, is worried about people who threaten and harass politicians and want these to face tougher penalties. Nearly three out of four Riksdag (parliament) deputies say that they have been subjected to harassment, threats or violence because of their positions. For elected representatives in local government the figure was around one in three. The minister blamed threats and violence against elected representatives “on the public’s lack of faith in politicians.”

But if Sweden is such a paradise, why are so many people angry with their politicians? Perhaps there is something going on beneath the surface? Maybe ordinary citizens feel that the political elites don’t want to deal with the issues they care about? Sweden is a semi-totalitarian country. It’s all about façade. On the surface, Sweden is a tolerant nation and peaceful democracy. In reality, there is massive media censorship by a closed elite that is scared of having a debate about immigration. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations on immigration. Yet not one party represented in the Swedish Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society or the current immigration policies. The Swedish elite congratulate themselves that they have managed to keep “xenophobic” parties from gaining a foothold while the country is sinking underneath their feet.

Jonathan Friedman is a New York Jew, now living with his Swedish wife in the southern Swedish city of Malmö where he teaches socio-anthropology. According to him, “no debate about immigration policies is possible, the subject is simply avoided. Sweden has such a close connection between the various powerful groups, politicians, journalists, etc. The political class is closed, isolated.”

Two Swedish girls were sent home from school for wearing sweaters showing a tiny Swedish flag. The headmaster was concerned that this might be deemed offensive by some immigrants. Helle Klein, political editor of the newspaper Aftonbladet, boasts: “If the debate is going to be about whether there are problems with immigrants, we don’t want it.” Hans Bergström, former editor-in-chief of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, worries that Sweden has become “a one-party state.” According to Friedman, the elites are nervous and worried to see their power slip away. And therefore they want to silence critics, as for instance the Sweden Democrats, a small rightist party outside parliament opposed to immigration. “It is a completely legal party, they just aren’t allowed to speak. It is absurdly undemocratic. They are marginalised. They are isolated and ridiculed. . . . and then they are called undemocratic.

In reality, the basis of democracy has been completely turned on its head. It is said: ‘democracy is a certain way of thinking, a specific set of opinions, and if you do not share them, then you aren’t democratic, and then we condemn you and you ought to be eliminated. The People? That is not democratic. We the Elite, we are democracy.’ It is grotesque and it certainly has nothing to do with democracy, more like a kind of moral dictatorship.”

Before the national elections in the fall of 2006, members of all the established parties, including the so-called right-wing opposition, are cooperating in efforts to boycott any collaboration with the Sweden Democrats or other “xenophobic” parties after the elections. This is widely applauded by the Swedish media establishment. The majority of headmasters in Stockholm’s high schools want to block the Sweden Democrats from participating in pre-election debates at their schools because they disagree with their “perspective on humanity.” Party members can seldom hold meetings without being hassled by political hooligans, who make noise, destroy equipment or even resort to violence. Violent assaults and life threatening attacks against members of the Sweden Democrats, by Muslims or “anti-Fascists,” have taken place many times, but are rarely mentioned in the media. No dissent is tolerated in Sweden.

In one such attack, which extreme Leftists were later openly bragging about on the Internet, around 30 members of the Sweden Democrats were attending a private party outside the town of Växjö. “To clearly demonstrate that the Sweden Democrats are not welcome in our area, about 20 anti-Fascists chose to attack the party.” “The Sweden Democrats were attacked with knives, axes, iron bars and other weapons. After that, their cars were destroyed.” The brave Leftists then smashed the windows and threw tear gas into the building, forcing people outside, where they were again attacked and beaten with iron bars and axes. Several of the people were hospitalized after the attack. This was a peaceful, private party by unarmed members of a perfectly legal political party that just happens to be critical of the country’s immigration policies. These brave Leftists or “anti-Fascists” do, for some curious reason, seem to behave pretty much like, well, Fascists, a bit like the Brown Shirts in the 1930s, physically assaulting political opponents to silence them. In another incident in Stockholm, members of the Sweden Democrats handing out leaflets for the party were attacked by a group of extreme Leftists, who started beating and kicking them. One of them got tear gas sprayed in his face. According to Oscar Sjöstedt from the Sweden Democrats in Stockholm, this was the third tear gas attack against them in a few months.

Seemingly encouraged by the silence over these attacks from the police and the political establishment, who seem in no rush to stop these assaults on troublesome political opponents, the extreme Leftists have recently stepped up their attacks to also include mainstream parties represented in parliament. Two windows were smashed at the Centre Party’s offices in Stockholm. Several of the Centre Party’s offices around the country have been vandalised. A party representative said that they suspected that the attacks were in protest against the party’s proposal for special labour agreements for newly employed young people. Similar attacks have been carried out elsewhere. On the Internet and at demonstrations, a ‘faction of the Invisible Party’, a group said to be extreme left anarchists, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

While critics of immigration are demonized in Sweden, Communists are much more accepted. The Left Party is a support party for the current Swedish Social Democratic government, whose party does not hold a majority in parliament by itself. Leader of the Left Party, Lars Ohly, has called himself a Communist after he was elected party leader. In 1999, a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he stated that: “I stand for a modern Leninism based on class struggle.” He has also said that “we must never accept a conception of democracy elevated far above the class struggle.” Senior party members had close contact with the repressive regimes in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. In Sweden, it is OK to openly support an ideology that killed 100 million people during the 20th century and enslaved millions more, but “undemocratic” to call for limitations in Muslim immigration.

The website “The Local”, a good source of Swedish news translated to English, notes that it looks increasingly likely that any government led by the Social Democrats will also include the Left Party in a formal coalition after this fall. Apart from quoting approvingly from Marx’s Communist Manifesto, “the party’s economic policy document contains such gems as a six hour working day, renationalization of previously state-owned companies, and policies for large companies to be taken over by workers or the state.” For the past two parliaments, the Social Democrats have ruled with support from the Greens and the Left Party, but neither party has been given a formal place in government. Soon, Sweden “could have cabinet ministers arguing for large tax increases in a country which already has one of the world’s highest tax burdens. Alternatively, they could be demanding nationalization of industry in a country where the state already owns mining companies, mortgage lenders, drinks makers, pharmacies and betting companies.” The leader of the Left Party is putting his foot down before national elections this September. If the Left Party doesn’t get a ministerial post, Lars Ohly told newspaper Dagens Nyheter his party might not support a Social Democrat-led minority government.

Swedish blog the Stockholm Spectator comments on the strong support for these “reformed” Communists among Swedish journalists, documented by opinion polls: “Unlike the American media landscape, where accusations of bias are routinely leveled and ritually denied, it isn’t uncommon in Sweden to admit that coverage is lop-sided. Left-wing journalist Jan Guillo, responding to a study showing a disproportionate amount of Left Party (former Communist party) voters in Stockholm newsrooms, admitted that “The statistics are true…There is a definite overrepresentation of leftists in the media world.” The same Guillo has also bragged about the fact that unlike Scandinavian neighbors Norway and Denmark, Sweden doesn’t have a significant political party critical of Muslim immigration. This is, according to him, because Swedish intellectuals have stuck together to prevent this from happening. “Swedish Radio correspondent Ceclia Udden who, when accused of systematic bias in covering the American election, blithely agreed with her critics and expressed bewilderment as to why anyone would be bothered by such trivialities. “On such issues as the US right and Israel…there was a Swedish…consensus, and any reporting had to be based on that,” she said.”

Ethnologist Maria Bäckman, in her study “Whiteness and gender,” has followed a group of Swedish girls in the suburb of Rinkeby outside Stockholm, where native Swedes have been turned into a tiny minority of the inhabitants due to rapid immigration. The subjects of the study were “teenage girls, living in the suburbs, who are identified both by themselves and by others as Swedish. But they are Swedes living in what is usually called an immigrant suburb. Thus they are seen as different.” “They may encounter prejudices such as the idea that Swedish girls act and dress in a sexually provocative way or that blonde girls are easy.” Bäckman relates that several of the girls she interviewed stated that they had dyed their hair to avoid unwanted attention and sexual harassment. They experienced that being blonde involves old men staring at you, cars honking their horns and boys calling you “whore.” We thus have a situation where being blonde in certain areas of Sweden means being a target of harassment. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten visited Rinkeby to find out if the rumors were true. They spent several hours there, in a suburb of the Swedish capital, without finding a single blonde, Swedish girl. Almost all the inhabitants there are of immigrant background. Virtually none of them referred to themselves as Swedish, they usually said they came from somewhere else. Many of them also asked the journalists questions about Swedes, to hear what they are like. They thought Swedes were idiots, but they hardly ever met any of them.

A report from organization Save the Children tells of how being a young Swedish girl today means feeling unsafe. The girls are scared of being raped, a possibility that appears very real to them. Many girls are planning how to go home at night, how to pretend to be talking on the mobile phone, how to keep their keys in their hand to defend themselves or how to simply run all the way home. Both the fear and the choice of strategies indicate that many girls feel genuinely unsafe outdoors during certain hours of the day. The fear is well founded. A striking number of girls have experienced harassment from boys or men. Most frequently, the harassment comes from boys of the same age as the girls. Being called “whore” has become so common in some schools that several of the girls say the teachers no longer react to this.

Tensta is a suburb in northern Stockholm with a very high concentration of immigrants. Nalin Pekgul, a member of parliament between 1994 and 2002, recently left Tensta because she thought it had become too unsafe. “I understood then that many are wearing bulletproof vests here. What has happened here, I wondered. Is this Tensta?” Pekgul, who is a Muslim herself, has also noted that fundamentalistic variants of Islam are growing stronger in Tensta. Her children come home and wonder why their mother doesn’t wear a hijab or why their family don’t go to the mosque. “I don’t like it when my son comes home and says that ‘Mom, we Muslims don’t lie, but Christians do, because they don’t have God.’ He hasn’t got that from us,” she says. Actress Ylva Törnlund has visited several schools in Tensta, and was alarmed by the harsh atmosphere she discovered there. “The attitudes we meet in the schools are frightening. One boy talked about how girls should be f**ked to pieces until they bleed,” Törnlund said. She decided to visit the area after a rape that took place in a public bath nearby in broad daylight. A 17-year-old girl was raped, and none of the other guests did anything to stop this. The girl was first approached by a 16-year-old boy. He and his friends followed her as she walked away into a grotto, and inside the grotto he got her blocked in the corner, ripped off her bikini and raped her, while his friend held her firm.

“It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid, in an interview about another gang rape involving a Swedish girl and immigrant perps. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably f**ked before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.”“It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “Many immigrant boys have Swedish girlfriends when they are teenagers. But when they get married, they get a proper woman from their own culture who has never been with a boy. That’s what I am going to do. I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get f**ked to pieces.” The number of rape charges in Sweden has quadrupled in just above twenty years. Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six times as common today as they were a generation ago. Resident aliens from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia dominate the group of rape suspects. Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm, who has investigated violent crimes in one court, found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or by foreign parents.

The official explanation given by Swedish authorities to this increase is that much of it is a “technical” increase due to the fact that more victims of rape now report this crime to the police. There is not a hint of evidence for this explanation. On the contrary, intimidation of people reporting any kind of crime to the police has rapidly worsened in Sweden during the same time period. Threats against witnesses in Swedish court cases quadrupled between 2000 and 2003 alone. Besides, there is a lack of trust among the general public in the efficiency of their police force. Street violence of all kinds is soaring on a national level. Private security companies are in great demand in major Swedish cities, as a serious lack of police to combat rising crime has made many citizens tired of being robbed. The number of reported cases of physical abuse/assault in Stockholm has tripled in three decades. The number of people under the age of 18 who are serving sentences in juvenile detention centres has risen sharply over the last five years. Gangs of 14- and 15-year-olds raping and robbing is now common in many Stockholm suburbs. Mafia networks demanding protecting money from private businesses are increasingly common. Organized crime is no longer just a problem in the major cities. It has now spread throughout most of Sweden. At the same time, the underfunded and undermanned Swedish police officers feel “unmotivated” to fight crime, according to a study made by police researcher Stefan Holgersson, who interviewed 2000 Swedish police officers.

One person who seems to have a better grasp than Mr. Cowell of what’s happening with Muslim immigration in Sweden and Europe is Christopher Caldwell, who has written several articles about the topic, including one in the New York Times in February 2006 called “Islam on the Outskirts of the Welfare State.” Visting the Stockholm immigrant suburb of Rinkeby, Caldwell asked whether something like the French riots of the fall of 2005, with burning cars and rampaging gangs, could happen in Sweden. “Absolutely,” said one lanky boy near the window. “People burn cars here all the time. Not because they’re angry — because they think it’s fun.” In January, former Swedish MP Nalin Pekgul had a public discussion with the French feminist Fadela Amara about changes in France. “Whenever she talked about France,” Pekgul recalls, “it sounded like we were undergoing the same changes France did, only 10 years behind. It was the first time I had thought: I’m going to have to leave. It’s not going to get better.” Caldwell also noted, while mentioning the fact that immigrants still tend to marry someone from their original homeland, that in Sweden, unlike Denmark, “public discussion of this kind of endogamy is muted, although Swedes complain in private that it slows integration and unacceptably widens the number of potential new immigrants. “It’s nothing you can talk about,” says one educator at a Million Program school. “In general, we despise the Danes for raising this.” The rise of a right-wing anti-immigrant party, along the lines of the Danish People’s Party, appears unlikely in Sweden.”

Meanwhile, the Islamization of Sweden is proceeding apace. In the spring of 2006, Sweden’s largest Muslim organisation demanded in a letter, signed by its leader Mahmoud Aldebe, that Sweden introduce separate laws for Muslims. The proposals included allowing imams into state (public) schools to give Muslim children separate lessons in Islam and their parents’ native languages. The letter also said that boys and girls should have separate swimming lessons and that divorces between Muslims should be approved by an imam. The letter was a list running over several pages with aggressive demands for just about everything; separate family laws for Muslims, regulating marriage and divorce, that public schools should employ imams to teach homogeneous classes of Muslims children in their religion and the language of their original homeland, and a “mosque in every municipality to be built through interest-free loans made available by the local municipalities.” This to “demonstrate “Islam’s right to exist in Sweden” and to “heighten the status of and respect towards Muslims.” Sweden’s Equality Minister Jens Orback called the proposals “completely unacceptable.”

That sounds encouraging. However, it looks increasingly as if the election in September will be a very close race, and the Leftist parties will be dependent upon the support of immigrants, who tend to vote for Leftist parties all over Europe, to remain in power. As Nima Sanandaji points out in FrontPage Magazine, “Swedish public television exposed that the leading Social Democratic party had started fishing for votes with the help of radical Muslim clergies.” For several years the Christian wing of the Social Democratic party, called The Brotherhood, has been working with the influential Muslim leader Mahmoud Aldebe, president of Sweden’s Muslim Association. Already in 1999, Aldebe proposed that sharia, Islamic law, should be introduced in Sweden. After an honor killing of a Kurdish girl in 2003, Aldebe did not condemn the murderers. Aldebe sees the entire debate regarding honor-related murders as an attack against the Islamic religion and claims in a letter that a public debate regarding these acts of murder risks “encourag[ing] immigrant girls to revolt against the tradition of the families and their religious values.” After the last election in 2002, Sweden’s Muslim Association sent a congratulation letter to the re-elected Social Democratic Prime minister Göran Persson, congratulating him on his victory and hoping that Persson would work for implementing some of the demands of the Association in the future. The Muslim Brotherhood has earlier stated that for them, “Sweden is in many ways an ideal country, [and it] shares the ideals of the [Swedish] Social Democrats in their view of the welfare society. Leading figures in Muslim congregations are also active within the Social Democratic [Party], and have very good relations with Sweden’s Christian Social Democrats. “The Social Democrats have, in turn, and perhaps as thanks for the support they receive from the mosque leadership, shown a tendency to shy away from the fact that there is extremism in some of our mosques. This has given the Muslim Brotherhood the freedom to force its ideology upon [the mosque’s worshippers].”

During the spring of 2006, by granting a visa to Hamas “refugee minister” Atef Edwane, Sweden enabled the terrorist representative to visit any other European country who had signed the Schengen Accord. Atef Edwane visited Norway and Germany as part of a European tour, despite a European Union policy of no contact with the radical movement. As sensible Swedish blogger Dick Erixon pointed out, it seems as if the Social Democratic Swedish government are more willing to be dealing with Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas than with the Sweden Democrats or native Swedes wanting to limit Muslim immigration. At the same time, PM Göran Persson stated that “the government made an error when it allowed the Swedish Air Force to undertake exercises together with Israel.” The Air Force took part in exercises with Israel in 2005 in Canada. Sweden also decided to withdraw from an international air force exercise to be held in Italy in May 2006, after learning that units from the Israeli air force would participate. After the Hamas visa story, Israeli authorities called Sweden “the most anti-Israeli country in Europe,” which in the Eurabia of 2006 is quite an achievement. Sweden is a neutral country, and its concept of “neutrality” has in the past frequenly implied appeasing the anti-democratic forces of the day. In a process we might label “Swedish jumping,” Sweden appeased the Nazis in the 1930s and later the Communists and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Sticking to form, it is appeasing the Islamic world now.

Earlier in 2006, Swedish Chancellor of Justice Mr Göran Lambertz decided to discontinue his department’s pre-trial investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm, where audio cassettes with highly inflammatory anti-Semitic content were being sold. After Swedish radio programme Dagens Eko unveiled the contents of the cassettes in November 2005, a charge of racial incitement was filed. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice responded by closing the pre-trial investigation on the grounds that “the lecture did admittedly feature statements that are highly degrading to Jews (among other things, they are consistently referred to as the brothers of apes and pigs)” but pointing out that such statements “should be judged differently – and therefore be regarded as permissible – because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict.” In Sweden, an anti-Semitic crime is reported to the police once every three days. The Jewish congregations in major cities Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö are forced to spend up to 25 percent of their membership fees on security and hired guards. And most of these hate crimes are perpetrated by Muslims. There are reports of Swedish Jews who have signed up for service in the Israeli Defence Forces to escape harassment and persecution in Sweden. Even some non-Jews from Sweden say they feel “liberated” when they go to Israel. In Israel, you know who the country’s enemies are, and you are prepared to fight for your country and for your convictions. It is hard to overstate the extent to which Sweden is a politically repressed nation, thanks to self-proclaimed guardians of the Multicultural Truth. Swedish historian of religion Matthias Gardell claims that Islamophobia is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy in the Western world today. Swedish writer and leftist intellectual Jan Guillou has stated that the rhetoric employed by the Nazis against Jews is now used to target Muslims.

In a Sociological survey entitled “Vi krigar mot svenskarna” (“We’re waging a war against the Swedes”), young immigrants in the troubled city of Malmö have been interviewed about why they are involved in crime. Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, and set to become the first major Scandinavian city with a Muslim majority within a decade or two, has got nine times as many reported robberies per capita as Copenhagen, Denmark. The wave of robberies the city has witnessed is part of a “war against Swedes.” This is the explanation given by young robbers with immigrant background on why they are only robbing native Swedes, in interviews with Petra Åkesson. “I read a report about young robbers in Stockholm and Malmö and wanted to know why they are robbing other youths. It usually doesn’t involve a lot of money,” she says. She interviewed boys between 15 and 17 years old, both individually and in groups. Almost 90% of all robberies that are reported to the police were committed by gangs, not individuals. “When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” This argument was repeated several times. “Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.” The boys explain, laughingly, that “there is a thrilling sensation in your body when you’re robbing, you feel satisfied and happy, it feels as if you’ve succeeded, it simply feels good.” “It’s so easy to rob Swedes, so easy.” “We rob every single day, as much as we want to, whenever we want to.” The immigrant youth view Swedes as stupid and cowardly: “The Swedes don’t do anything, they just give us the stuff. They’re so wimpy.” The young robbers don’t plan their crimes: “No, we just see some Swedes that look rich or have nice mobile phones and then we rob them.”

A high school teacher in Malmö discovered that about a dozen Arab students were laughing and shouting “Allahu Akbar!” while watching a DVD of infidel hostages being beheaded in Iraq. The headmaster didn’t think the incident was such a big deal.

At least 139 schools in Sweden suffered arson attacks during 2002 alone. Björn Vinberg from the fire department in Kroksbäck in the Malmö area says it’s humiliating and degrading to put out fires again and again in the same immigrant areas, with school kids laughing at them and lighting a new one just afterwards. His colleagues have been to the same place no less than twenty times, all totally unnecessary. In the spring of 2006, a section of a school in Malmö was decided to be closed, due to “lack of security, vandalism and poor study results”. The school had been vandalised several times and in January part of it was damaged in an arson attack. “It’s the first time a school in Sweden has been closed because it is too rowdy,” said Jan Björklund, who saw the decision as giving in to discipline problems.

While this was going on, the number one priority for the political class in Sweden seemed to be demonizing neighboring Denmark for “xenophobia” and a “brutal” debate about Muslim immigration. During the Jihad riots in France in the fall of 2005, Sweden’s Social Democratic Prime Minister Göran Persson criticised the way the French government handled the unrest in the country. “It feels like a very hard and confrontational approach.” Persson also rejected the idea of more local police as a “first step” in Sweden. “I don’t believe that’s the way we would choose in Sweden. To start sending out signals about strengthening the police is to break with the political line we have chosen to follow,” he said. Meanwhile, as their authorities have largely abandoned their third largest city to creeping anarchy, there is open talk among the native Swedes still remaining in Malmö of forming vigilante groups, armed with baseball bats and concern for their children’s safety. At the same time, Muslim immigration to the country is not just continuing, but growing. Sweden’s population was growing faster in 2006 than at any time during the last twelve years. Statistics Sweden calculated that immigration increased by almost 85% compared with the first quarter the previous year. Most of these people came from Muslim countries such as Iraq, Somalia and Bosnia Herzegovinia.

What happened to the famous Swedish nanny state, you say? Don’t Swedes pay the highest tax rates in the world? Yes, they do. But tens of billions of kroner, some say several hundred billions, are being spent every year on propping up rapidly growing communities of Muslim immigrants. Sweden has become the entire world’s welfare office, because the political elites have decided that massive Muslim immigration is “good for the economy.” Pretty soon, Sweden could have an “army” of just 5000 men. That’s five thousand troops to defend a nation that is geographically more than three times the size of England. And it may take up to a year to assemble all of them, provided they are not on peacekeeping missions abroad. That Sweden could soon need a little peacekeeping at home seems to escape the establishment. In 2006, the celebrated Swedish welfare state has become the world’s largest pyramid scheme, an Enron with a national flag. Just as the country was in the midst of the worst crime wave in modern Scandinavian history, with a desperately underfunded police force, the Swedish Social Democrats announced that cheaper public dental care would be a major issue in the election campaigns. There could hardly be a better symbol of Europe’s love affair with the welfare state and “social security” in an age where physical security is rapidly disappearing through runaway Muslim immigration. “Eurabia: You may get your teeth kicked in, but at least you have cheap dental care” could become the slogan for the entire continent. The Swedish elites, especially the Socialists who are supposed to represent “the people,” seem to care little for the well-being of their own citizens, and much more for clinging on to power and polishing their image abroad. As Jonathan Friedman, professor of social anthropology at the University of Lund outside Malmö puts it: “In Sweden, it’s almost as if the state has sided with the immigrants against the Swedish working class.”

Yet despite of all of this, Alan Cowell writes in the New York Times that Sweden is full of “safety features, sort of like a Volvo.” Why didn’t he also ask some of the political dissidents about the state of the country, such as Ulf Nilson, challenging censorship through his essays at the Expressen newspaper, Jan Milld of the website Blågula frågor or Danish blogger Steen writing at Snaphanen, with great coverage of developments in Sweden? The reality is that the “Swedish model” in 2006 no longer refers to a stable and peaceful state with an advanced economy, but increasingly to a Eurabian horror story of utopian Multiculturalism, Socialist mismanagement and runaway immigration. The strains caused by immigration are now so large that unless something serious is done about this, pretty soon Sweden will face the same kind of riots we have recently seen in France, and will approach the point of permanent ethnic and religious strife.

Swedish politicians and media need to put the well-being of their sons and daughters above that of Political Correctness and their own Multicultural, ideological vanity, and it is shocking that they actually need to be reminded of this. It is an international embarrassment to Sweden as a nation that Swedes travel around the world to lecture about women’s rights, and at the same time their own young women are finding that their most basic rights, such as being able to go outside wearing normal clothes without being harassed, are slipping away. Unless Swedish authorities are able to provide basic security to a population that pays some of the highest tax rates in the world, the cabinet of Prime Minister Göran Persson should publicly admit its inadequacy and resign from office. At the very least, it should be honest enough to tell Swedish citizens that they must provide security for themselves, and stop making it difficult for people to do this.

The Swedish general elections are just a few months away, and this time, Muslim immigration needs to be raised to the very top of the public agenda. Failing to do so now could have potentially disastrous consequences later. Time is running out, both for Sweden and for much of Western Europe.

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comments:

Since I'm already here, let me add that I'm not sure whether I would vote for the Sweden Democrats myself. I have good Swedish friends, not dhimmis, who don't want to vote for them because they are skeptical of the background of some party members. I didn't necessarily write this to lionize them, merely to point out that a perfectly legal party cannot be treated this way in a democracy, especially not a country where both Communists and Islamic terrorists seem to be given respectability.

FP: The essay got so long because I took great care in making sure that the factual information should be as accurate as possible. If you ask me, Sweden didn't "suddenly" become soft-totalitarian, it has probably been this way for some time. All the problems debated here are present all over Western Europe. My own country, Norway, is also among the worst. But I believe few countries have such powerful authoritarian, elitist and hard-Marxist traditions as Sweden.

It's only hard to believe this is happening due to the total mainstream media blackout of the facts until it reaches civil war proportions. Who knew car burning was the French national pastime until it became an epidemic?

Fjordman,

Great piece. The only missing link, probably due to space considerations, is the European Arab Dialogue and the varous EU agreements which cede national welfare to EU goals and policy.

That the left has made an outright alliance with the Muslims isn't all that surprising. On the one hand they argue, "We need them to boost the economy!" . This in the face of immigration, and all the nasty fallout from it, costing far more than they get out of it. Which looks like a contradiction to me ... which means that the economic argument is probably bullshit. So on the other hand, the left (not just in Sweden, but seemingly everywhere in Europe) has made a political bargain with the Muslims: we give you free money and you vote for us. A very old bargain in many democracies ... relatively benign so long as immigration isn't factored in. But in this case, we have kind of a moral hazard situation: the leftwing parties can increase the size of their base through immigration more easily than any other way, thus have a great deal of incentive to do so, and thus will do so and justify it any way they can.

Like I said, this dynamic has been seen in a lot of western countries, not just Europe. Canada, for instance: the Liberal party was a political hegemon for fifteen years, thanks in large part to the loyalty of large immigrant populations (luckily most of our immigrants are Chinese or Indian, an actually civilized group that works their butts off and assimilates very nicely.) So even with immigration, bribes for votes can be relatively benign ... but when you're talking muslims who figure they're in the dar al-harb, well....

If it was just the left politcos that wouldn't be quite so terrifying. We know they played footsie with the USSR back in the bad old days. What worries me is the diabolical collusion of big business (globalization, low wages, cheap labour, high profits, and they are not worried - elites thrive in 3rd world countries anyway) which also tends to put the right out of fight, as well as influence on the media (beyond its usual lefty tendencies).

The negative role of big business in the US immigration debate is more visible, I shudder to imagine how far that rot has spread in the less transparent euro political circles ....

It has been said that democracies last only as long as when the population realizes it can vote itself a payrise. But multicultural values means politicans don't have to take their electorate for granted, the sleazy ones can happily change the electorate by promoting immigration ... of course then they are bound to it, a faustian pact. I wonder if this is merely opportunistic or whether subversive immigration isn't another deliberate trick the left has adopted from the Gramsci/Frankfurt School playbook of political_correctness/cultural_marxism?

Fellow Peacekeeper: "is merely opportunistic or whether subversive immigration isn't another deliberate trick the left has adopted from the Gramsci/Frankfurt School playbook of political_correctness/cultural_marxism?"

Actually, I've been wondering the same thing, but didn't want to come off as excessively paranoiac (not that I'm suggesting you are: I'm just overly cautious.)

I figure it's a combination of blind stupidity and outright mendacity, though I'm not sure on the proportions.

I don't think they all understand what they are doing, yet so much of what the political left does now is demonstrably derived from memes generated by Gramsci/the Frankfurt School. Those were formulated to be deliberately destructive to western society. I just wonder if somewhere in their writings they didn't advocate unrestricted immigration - particularly from the deprived 3rd world - as a means of diluting and destroying traditional society and thereby preparing it for the marxist utopia.

Or did this meme evolve by itself as a logical followon from multiculturalism/antirascism?

The paranoid version would be that the KGB injected the idea when the former young hippies/socialist students began to come to power in the 80's.

FP and Matt: When I have the time, I will finish an essay called "The Revenge of the Soviet Union." Ibn Warraq gave an interview in Denmark, when the Danish edition of "Why I am not a Muslim" was released, where he stated that the Left is angry because the Marxists lost the Cold War. I think he's right. Leftists can't come up with a workable alternative to our capitalist, Judeo-Christian culture, but that doesn't mean they hate it any less now then they did before. They just chose a different way of attacking it. Instead of focusing on economics, they have shifted all their efforts into the cultural sphere, undermining or evil, capitalist culture by Multiculturalism, mass immigration and "deconstruction" of our entire history. Fifteen years after the Cold War ended and Socialism was supposed to be dead, Marxist nonsense is spewing out of our media and our Universities. It's called Political Correctness, and I have heard people who have lived in the Communist countries in Eastern Europe say that Westerners are at least as brainwashed by PeeCee as they were by Communism. The scary thing is, I think they're right.

Nikita Khrushchev said that "We will bury you!", that Socialism would supplant Capitalism in the same manner that Capitalism itself supplanted Feudalism. Maybe he was right. Maybe Socialism will bury us, and that Mr. Khrushchev is now pounding his shoe somewhere, smilling. But it will be in a different way from what he imagined. Socialism won't be able to create a viable alternative to Western civilization, but it can weaken it so much that it will become easy prey for Islam.

It's called Political Correctness, and I have heard people who have lived in the Communist countries in Eastern Europe say that Westerners are at least as brainwashed by PeeCee as they were by Communism. The scary thing is, I think they're right.

Hell yes. IMHO the residual dose of real Communism has given Eastern Europe some crossover immunity to this new marxist virus. So Poland, Slovakia or Latvia has defended (in law or constitution) traditional religion, the language and culture, or the priviledged status of the family in society, or failed to kowtow to homosexualism, and enforces strict asylum rules. In all those cases the local left, local and international media, and EUrocrats have howled blue murder, and painted us as backwards primitives. HA!

What cheers me is that the reunification of Germany appears to have significantly strengthened its society, and defused any support for immigration.

On Sweden's "soft totalitarianism": this shouldn't be surprising, the English writer Roland Huntford [?], author of The New Totalitarians, wrote about it in the early 1970s. (Doubtless he would now see such totalitarianism throughout the West.)

Maybe this is an outrageous question, but if things continue to deteriorate badly in Sweden, with the government and media paralyzed by political correctness, is it out of the question that the military would step in and seize power?

Yes, I know that (outwardly at least) military leaders must proclaim loyalty to the predominant leftist ideology of the ruling class. But privately, is it possible that enough generals and colonels are becoming fed up with their civilian masters?

I also figure that unlike France, the Swedish military must have relatively few Muslims, so the political reliability of the common soldier should not be an issue.

Thanks for all the effort it must have taken to put this together, Fjordman.

Personally, I find it depressing. My Mom is Swedish, and I spent the summer with my Grandparents in Gothenburg back in 1976 when I was 16. I absolutely loved it there. But I remember my Grandfather even back then railing against the leftist government and how they were driving the country to ruin.

I haven't been back since, and now I have to admit that I'm reluctant to do so.

There is a new domino theory in the offing here I believe. Sparks, brush fires, flickering flames can be seen all over Europe but shortly a conflagration will start that, like the sun, will be self sustaining, it will feed on the heat generated by success at dominating a passive native populace, its oxidant will be the blind progressives in power and their orthodoxy of political correctness. When the tipping point is reached after all the faustian bargains have been made, once the coffers of tolerance and multi-culturalism can no longer pay the jizya to the masters of intolerance the muslims will annouce "checkmate". What will follow will be the wholesale destruction of European culture with all the abandon of the destruction of the statues at Bamyan. The orgy of intolerance will see the contents of your museums and libraries burning in the streets to the chants of "Allahu Ahkbar". The toxic belief in the God-ordained supremacy of the Muslim people coupled with their current position of total powerlessness will express itself in the most bitter rage Europe has ever seen. What will be left will be the burned out hulks of nations as the Muslims awake to realize they have inherited the wind, conquered their way to a poverty found only in their homelands and only able to remain cohesive at the hand of the inevitable Mullah or dictator they know so well who will inevitably appear. The muslims will be no better off than they were before but detroying the enlightenment will at least help to erase the constant reminder that their own course is fundementally doomed to always remain a 14th century way of life. Getting rid of that reminder will at least restore their faith in their own vain supremacy. Its time for Europe to take action now, the warning signs are everywhere, to quote Little Red Riding Hood: "Gramma what big eyes you have".

Fjordman:I am very grateful for your writing. It is the main reason I came to this website. Is there any other blog you post on? What is occurring in Europe is of great importance to me personally. Also, thank you for abstaining from obscene language. I got your point quite clearly with you writing "f**k" instead of the expletive.

Another point to make is that Sweden has some problems with a proper implementation of secret elections. During elections representatives for the various parties line up outside the voting stations and voters have to pick up the voting slips from the party representatives. So if someone wants to vote for, say Swedish Democrats, he’ll go to the Swedish Democrat representative and pick up a voting slip from him. And everybody can see exactly what party he intends to vote for. Some in an attempt to mask their voting, pick up slips from several party representatives – but this in itself is suspicious and possible harmful in a society where correct political opinions is often essential for your work prospects.

Also organised smear campaigns against political dissidents have become a common left-wing scare technique. If some group find out a certain person belongs to or is affiliated with some (perceived right-wing) party they disagree with. They’ll get his full name, address, phone number etc. and a description of his “crime”, this they’ll post on lampposts and in public boards in local stores and all over the local community and send it to his parents and place of work (which means he’ll often enough get fired) etc.

Of course Jan Guillou as mentioned by Fjordman, the perhaps most respected Swedish commentator (journalist, author and movie maker) is also eaten by a near unbelievable anti-Americanism and – it goes without saying – anti-Israelism. For example, here where he, true to form, demonstratively refused to participate and walked out of a show that debated the 9/11 terror attacks when the participants were urged to observe a three minutes silence in honour of the victims:

The prime minister has said that the terrorist attack against the U.S. was, in fact, ’an attack against us all’. That is not true, of course. . . . The terrorists attacked U.S. imperialism. No one on earth should have been capable of misunderstanding that message.

[With the three minutes of silence] we were pressed into service as Americans. Our grief, which we were directed to manifest collectively, was decreed to be greater than for any other event since World War II.

The terrorists who attacked the U.S. killed an incredibly large number of innocent people-- up to ten thousand lives according to some estimates. That is roughly one-third the number of innocent human lives taken during Israel’s attack on Lebanon at the start of the 1980s. . . . But no Stockholm editoriialist would have conceived the preposterous notion of calling for a single minute’s silence for their sake, nor would any of that bloodthirsty tribe have informed us that we are all Lebanese.

The United States is the great mass murderer of our time. The wars against Vietnam and neighbouring countries of Southeast Asia, alone, took a toll of four million lives-- without a single silent moment being observed in Sweden.

[But] we are not Americans. We are Europeans, and it is for very obvious reasons that terrorists from the tormented and repeatedly mass-murdered Muslim world attacked the United States and not Europe. . . .

A defence of terrorism? Of course not. My modest proposal is simply that we regard U.S. wars of terror through the same moral prism as we do Muslim terrorism.

He usually refers to the US government as the US regime - don’t know if this has the same ominous overtones of dictatorship in English as it does in Swedish?

It should come as no surprise than Jan Guillou, who repeatedly has criticised Denmark as being moral corrupt for its free press and immigration policies, is featured heavily, side by side with Mein Kampf and The Protocols of Elders, on the (Swedish) www.radioislam.org – the perhaps most viciously anti-Semitic and racist homepage in Europe today.

Like here:Zionism is at its bases racist, and there the state of Israel is build on an apartheid system, exactly like South Africahttp://www.radioislam.org/judemakt/intro-2-apart.htm

That was in 1976 so one could have though it was in a moment of youthful exuberance. No such luck; here’s he from 2001:“[the] difference between Israel and the apartheid state of South Africa is that Israel executes more people and is keeping more people in jails and militant ghetto zones.”Thus is critique of the Israeli apartheid silenced

Well if it’s people like Jan Guillou who call Denmark as moral corrupt, I’ll bear than mark with pride.

I dare say that the situation here in Finland, may not be as dire as with its Scandanvian neighbors.

Its probably due to the fact that Finland only has around 30 000 Muslims total, which includes the historically moderate and modern minded community of Muslim Tatars....as well as a strict immigration policy.

The only worry I have, is if the immigration policy changes, and non-modernist Muslims swell the state in large numbers, the Finns would act in much the same way as the Swedes, if not even more so.

Rather than assume the elites are behaving this way out of ideology, perhaps a simpler explanation exists

If one wanted to BUY key members of the elite (enough of them to exercise effective control over immigration policy), would it be outside the resources of a nation like Iran, or even a bunch of wealthy Saudis?

I spent a couple of days in Karlshalm, a Swedish port, in 1970. I went see a band and the beer served was so weak that it could be chugged all night without feeling even slightly drunk. I went to a party afterwards where they played protest music (of all things) but what I found amusing was the spectacle of our ship's first mate publicly f***ing the host's wife. Strange contradictions: The state clearly distrusting the population's ability to responsibly drink alcohol mixed with an in-your-face sexual freedom and a heartfelt wear-it-on-your-sleeve leftist sensibility. My suburban Antipodean teenage brain had a bit of trouble processing this particular world view.

I'm fast coming to the opinion that once a society embarks upon the multicultural course that the die is cast and that there is little that can be done to prevent the coming catastrophe. The ONLY hope we have is the fledging internet and blogosphere. But I know we are only a very small minority. There may be nothing that we can do to prevent the dissolution of our society and the invasion of the Muslim hoards. They will get nuclear weapons and they will be willing to use them. Whether they are Iranian, French or other nukes doesn't much matter. The coming conflagration which will be witnessed by our children and their children will be a civilizaitonal perfect storm.

The land of Dag Hammerskjold going under. Hard to believe. Having married into a Swedish family, I can tell you that there is no one so adamant and hard to persuade as a Swede who thinks they know it all. They have to be persuaded by experience. Talking about the possible pitfalls beforehand doesn't crack any ice with a Swede, sure and certain of the righteousness of their position. Not unlike the French in some ways. I pray they can wake up and overcome what's happening. It would be ironic if after discovering North America first, they should now fall to Islamic invasion. I say Islamic because we are facing a Muslim nation, the citizens of which have loyalty and fealty only to Islam and their prophet. I am not hopeful for Sweden, however, and perhaps their national Karma is coming due.

That's a chilling thought and very likely, now that you mention it. I believe Javier Solana falls squarely into that category and look where he is. He's a lynchpin to EUro decisions now because of his position and he's definitely sympathetic to things the Saudis or Iranians want. They have his 'ear', so to speak.

Mohammedan infiltration will increase Sweden's problems tremendously, no economic benefit for the welfare system will be forthcoming, the welfare state is past its use-by date. If Mohammedan advances are not stopped dead in its track, Sweden will see civil war and large scale destruction unseen in Scandinavia.

So far very few smell the coffee. Is anyone willing to stand up for the Swedes?

I found the Times choice of a metaphor, "an economy with safety features, like a Volvo," interesting on many levels. Not the least of which is that Volvo was bought out some years ago by an American car company, Ford. Volvo's products are mediocre, but are regarded as luxury vehicles mainly because the high cost of labor at their factories hugely inflates their sticker price. And Volvo's have extensive liberal cachet allegedly because of "safety features" (again, not that much safer than any other model), but in reality, because liberals embrace the car as a symbol of the myth of "the Swedish model" of a quasi-socialist welfare state.

So it is with Sweden, a myth of safety and moral superiority. But there still is some neat stuff at IKEA (most of which is made in China).

We in Denmark need to wake up to this threat. We might compare favourably in this article, but the truth is Denmark also faces a rising Islamic threat helped into being by the socialist elite and not least by the EU.

We should act now and put a complete stop to all immigration into Denmark from Muslim countries. If needs be, we should leave the EU, strengthen our military and start extraditing the enemy imams like Abu Laban.

I am a first generation American of Swedish ancestry, and have many relatives still living in Sweden and Finland. When visiting with the branch in Sweden, I have always been struck by their obstinate belief in that which made no sense, such as the stubborn insistence that health care in Sweden is actually free instead of being paid for through their high taxes, that America is a uniquely racist society and so on.

On the last trip I made to Sweden, in 1989 I saw the tip of the iceberg and wondered where it would lead. On the train from Stockholm to Nynashamn, I saw a Middle Eastern woman in a hijab. She was the first immigrant I had seen in Sweden and I assumed that she was in the vanguard of what would prove to be a very trying change for Swedish society. I wondered then how it would all work out.

Unfortunately this kind of politically correct idiocy is not unique to western Europe. we are also experiencing it over here in Australia.

I'm not sure whether the recent riots in Sydney got much coverage world-wide, however they presented an excellent example of the PC nonsense that appears to have engulfed the west, especially in relation to immigration issues.

A protest by Anglo-Australians against the bashing of lifeguards by muslim lebanese turned ugly and a minority of very drunk protesters attacked anyone with brown skin. Admittedly this was very stupid. However their actions must be placed in the context of 15 years of bashings, rapes and other general types of young male muslim behaviour. For example, its not uncommon for large groups of young muslim males to crowd around a couple of young girls and ask such charming questions as "do you f***k".

The response of the muslims to the protest was predictable and resulted in hundreds of damaged cars, middle-aged women bashed in the head with baseball bats, stabbings, church burnings and shooting at a school christmas celebration. In contrast it is important to note that no one was seriously hurt by the Anglo-Australian rioters.

In typical PC style the police made no arrests of muslims carrying illegal firearms, baseball bats or iron bars However they did manage to arrest a white teenager who was found carrying a stick (for his own protection).

Police have made appeals to both the general community and the muslim-lebanese community to come forward and give up the names of rioters. Many Anglo Australians have had their names handed in, some even by their own parents. Guess how many Muslims have come forward to help police, Yes you guessed it Zero!

Really. It's sad. We live in an age of almost infinite information and it is quite obvious many here has not the slightest interest in it.

It's a sad joke. Extremists can find a cozy corner and huddle up in it, safe in the knowledge their beliefs will never be challenged.

This blog contains so many extremist fantasies it's hard to grasp. You rarely see them this concentrated. It offers an alternative reality where the walls of civilization soon will come crashing down. The readers are invited to share this knowledge and the identity that follows in the wake. This makes them feel selected and chosen. A small elite who knows the truth, set apart from the ignorant droning populace.

It is not facts. It is fiction, a safe thrill that only lives on the internet and in extremists minds. A horror story that makes the readers feel important, as if they and only they knew a big and important secret.

All the while the world continues as it has always done. There will not be any military coups to overthrow democracy. Muslims are still a small minority uninterested in the conspiracies they are attributed by right wing extremists. The economy is growing tremendously, there is no deficit, public turnout to election remains high, support for right wing extremists remain low, immigration is a trickle and people continue with their lives without thoughts of revolution.

Don't know what bible you read, but I sure would like to move to your universe. Are you willing to give directions to this wonderland you describe so eloquently?

Imagine living in paradise, where there is no global warming, no Bushchimphitler murdering our soldiers for oil, no tax breaks for the rich, or where hordes of illiterate and desperately needy illegal aliens are willing to risk life and limb to work for slave wages? Wow, what a neighborhood you have there.

Yes, indeedy, we are some sad group, old Gid...so just hit the "next blog" button at the top of the page and move along.

Nothing to see here for discerning folks like yourself. Leave us to wallow in our ninth circle of Dante's inferno. Believe me, we earned our spot here.

Hey, and if you come back, grab a bunch of lollipops off the trees back there where you live. We poor sad sacks could use a little sweetness around here...seeing as how you already provided the light we needed to see our mistakes.

Thanks for sharing, old boy...

BTW, you any kin to the Bible Gideons? If you are, many thanks for the book in the drawer at countless dreary motels. Come to think of it, I wonder why the ACLU isn't all over them like chocolate on New Orleans?

Y'all come back, ya hear? Specially if you have some of that fairy dust to share...

I will make a few comments on what Fjordman wrote. I will not comment on things he didn't wrote, as Dymphna does on my post. I will try to be contructive, precise and honest instead.

First of all Sweden doesn't have massive immigration. Contrary to what Fjordman writes it has been cut back the last ten years. It has not increased and it is certainly not massive. So he has got it totally wrong in this part. The idea that it is massive has been repeated by right wing extremist since at least as far back as the 1940's.

The size of the immigration and it's decrease for the last ten years is well known and widely debated in all swedish media, but these discussions have obviously not reached this blog. As a norwegian he could read swedish newspapers. It is not the language barrier.

It puzzles me how you can avoid this information. It really does. How do you do it?

I have to conclude it is a matter of faith. You can't be right wing without believing in the imminent collapse. If you don't believe there is no sense in being right wing.

Sweden has unemployment, yes, and it is a social problem, but the size of the unemployment doesn't set Sweden apart from other European countries and although the money could be used in better ways than welfare for the unemployed it is not crippling the economy as Fjordman says. The economy will grow almost 4 per cent this year. That is growth without the help of the oil the norwegians have or the chinese bankers of the americans. Sweden is not on the brink of bankrupcy. There is a small deficit this year because of the election coming up, but previous years there have been surplus.

It doesn't strike me as a country on the verge of collapse. That's just wishful thinking from right wing extremists who have always dreamed of the collapse of society and warned it is imminent. When does Norway run out of oil, by the way?

Fjordman is presenting the cost of immigration to several hundred billion kronor which is simply ridiculous. The total budget of the government is roughly 1000 billion kronor. I recognize the numbers though since they have been debated and dismissed as wildly inaccurate, in the debate Fjordman claims doesn't excist.

Fjordman either doesn't care or doesn't know. I'm betting on the latter.

I'm writing this so you know what Fjordman says is higly controversial. I don't expect many of you to actually believe what I say, that's not why you read his blog, but take note there is another side of the story which roughly 98 per cent of the voters are sticking to.

Now I know everybody but you are blind to the truth. You belong to a select few who knows what is really going on. But imagine for a second you are wrong. Look out the window, study the people walking down the street, unaware of the disaster that is looming over them. Maybe they are unaware because they read newspapers and watch the news on the telly instead of your blog.

Sweden doesn't have massive immigration. Contrary to what Fjordman writes it has been cut back the last ten years. It has not increased and it is certainly not massive.

I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. Only the last year, immigration has increased a lot, and was higher at the beginning of 2006 than it has been for 12 years. Per capita, Sweden has had more immigration during the past fifteen years than almost any other European country.

Fjordman is presenting the cost of immigration to several hundred billion kronor which is simply ridiculous. I recognize the numbers though since they have been debated and dismissed as wildly inaccurate

Dismissed by whom? If you read my piece, you would see that I quoted several possible numbers. The absolutely lowest estimates I have seen were a cost of 30- 40 billions every year, the highest of ten times that. I mentioned both. Even if you start with the lowest of those numbers, which is almost certainly too low, it still proves that Muslim immigration is a significant drain on the economy, despite the fact that the elites claim that we "need" it. That goes for all of Western Europe, not just Sweden.

Gideon's belief about Muslim immigrants in Sweden closely align with the socialist Left in the US, who believe that uneducated, illegal Mexicans are necessary to our well-being, when in actuality they are needed by govt subsidized big business and people who want to hire their fellow-beings for slave wages. Besides, Vicente Fox has a good place to send his criminals...

We are more fortunate in that most Mexicans come from a Judaeo-Christian tradition and if communist organizations like ANSWER and the self-hating academics would let them be, they'd assimilate easily, as have the Asian-Americans.

It's a horrible fate when you are used for fodder for someone else's agenda...

However, the local municipalities and the southwestern states are being bankrupted by the breakdown of the social services infrastructure, bending under the weight of sick, needy illegals. Fox also has a good place to send the sick now...

Since Dymphna makes a comment on my view of moslems I thought it approriate to reveal them. She didn't know them when she wrote her reply, but obviously she borrowed them til she did know, so she could write something.

You often see the assumption in the extreme right propaganda that all immigrants in Europe are moslem, all moslem are devout, all devouted moslems are islamists, and we all know all islamists are terrorists. Hence "Eurabia" (which is such a silly name for an islamophobic continent).

None of these assumptions are correct. A minority of the immigrants have a moslem background, many of these are no more religious than I am, few if any of the religious moslems in Sweden are islamists and the few numbers of militants are closely watched by the police. They can't even go to an internet café anymore without being filmed by an agent! What's the world coming to?

These assumptions you have lead you wrong and when mixed with apocalyptic visions of the imminent collapse of the (in all honesty) rather prosperous swedish society it just becomes laughable for someone living here.

My advice to you is to stick to what you actually know. Dont't pretend you know anything about Sweden.

They give you a picture that is false, not only that it only relays bad news but that it improves on them to make them more islamophobic. Their translations of swedish news articles are an example of what I wrote above, seeing no difference between immigrants in general and islamic fundamentalists.

You can't build your view of the world from sources like that. I recommend real news agencies.

Sweden's population is growing faster than at any time during the last twelve years. Statistics Sweden calculated that immigration increased by almost 12,000 people, or 85%, compared with the first quarter last year. Most people came from Iraq, Somalia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Bosnia Herzegovinia.

The fact that Gideon manages to get even such a simple statement wrong tells pretty much everything you need to know about him. That, and the fact that he uses the ridiculous term "Islamophobia" with a straight face.

Congratulations on proving Sweden has immigration. That must be what passes for final proof of who has got his facts straight in these circles.

I couldn't help but notice the article mentioning the temporary asylum law. Contrary to what Fjordman says, this law has been debated quite a lot for a long time, as is often the case with controversial laws. Let this observation be my contribution to the discussion, on a matter that is actually up for debate.

I now leave it to Fjordman to prove me wrong on that Sweden borders to both Norway and Finland, or something similarly obvious.

His claim there is no debate on immigration in Sweden has an equally obvious source; the so called "Sweden Democrats". It's a party around 1 per cent in the polls, desperately trying to forget its past as a seminazi-party with a turbulent and shady past. Some british readers might recognize their party symbol as that of the british National Front in the 80's and 90's. They actually changed the symbol three days after Fjordman wrote his blog to a more neutral flower, a change at least a decade overdue. They constantly complain they are not given the same media coverage as parties ten times their size. Well duh.

Fjordman has only listened to their propaganda and not the general media. I recognize the myths.

You can't form your views of reality from a tiny political party on the extreme right. It is about as neutral and unbiased as to only read news filtered by the american communist party, or the british National Front for that matter. It doesn't give a fair view of what is going on in the world or in Sweden.

Ten years ago, in 1996, immigration actually was at an all time low. This was the aftermath of the wars in Yugoslavia and immigration was down to a tenth.

The idea that Sweden "was very homogeneous as a country" ten years ago is just ludicrous. Immigration started in earnest in the 1960's, and has continued since then.

I see many of Fjordmans sources are from the far right, especially the "Sweden Democrats".

The "several hundred billions" have a link to a respected swedish newspaper and an opinion there. A professor in business economics, Lars Jansson, has written it. I own his book. The answer to this opinion came just a few days after from two professors of national economics. They totally refuted him and pointed to several grave errors he had made. It was obvioulsy not his field of expertise. This didn't discourage the extreme right though, they have continued to use his numbers.

The 225 billion for 2005 goes back to Jansson, the link goes to a coalition of Sweden Democrats and neonazis who have started a webb page about the cost of immigration, based largely on Jansson. Who is not an expert and proven wrong.

I have the numbers, but they are not really the issue here. The issue is whether Sweden was a homogeonus country ten years ago, which it certainly wasn't. The idea that something radical has happened in this country the last ten years is a very ignorant fantasy, spawned by extreme right propaganda.

Ten years ago this country had just experienced a truly massive wave of refugees from the war in Yugoslavia. This is common knowledge and doesn't have to be proven. You shouldn't deny it, but I think you will.

Most of these refugees were bosniaks from Bosnia-Hercegovina (where most of the fighting took place). This group was already represented in Sweden since the immigration in the 60's and 70's.

If you think these people secretly want to overthrow democracy and replace it with a theocratic dictatorship you're nuttier than I thought.

Gideon demonstrates yet again that he is a dishonest critic. The quote about ten year was from the article I criticized for being inaccurate. Yes, it started much earlier than that, but otherwise it was true: Sweden has been changed during a very short period of time, historically, from being an ethnically homogeneous country to one with huge and growing minorities of extremely different backgrounds.

fluffy: I don't know how much information is available about this in English, but in general, Christopher Caldwell is one of the better writers on the subject:

In a fit of absent-mindedness, Sweden has suddenly become as heavily populated by minorities as any country in Europe. Of 9 million Swedes, roughly 1,080,000 are foreign-born. There are between 800,000 and 900,000 children of immigrants, between 60,000 and 100,000 illegal immigrants, and 40,000 more asylum-seekers awaiting clearance. The percentage of foreign-born is roughly equivalent to the highest percentage of immigrants the United States ever had in its history (on the eve of World War I). But there are two big differences. First is that, given the age distribution of the native and foreign populations, the percentage of immigrants' offspring will skyrocket in the next generation, even if not a single new immigrant arrives, and even if immigrant fertility rates fall to native-born levels. But second, when America had the same percentage of foreign-born, many had arrived decades before, and were largely assimilated.

"Fjordman, gideon: do either of you have numbers? Is it possible to know the number of these immigrants that are Moslem?"

When someone asks about numbers, then yes, numbers are the issue. Really.

Fjordman, quoting Christopher Caldwell, said:

"Of 9 million Swedes, roughly 1,080,000 are foreign-born. There are between 800,000 and 900,000 children of immigrants, between 60,000 and 100,000 illegal immigrants, and 40,000 more asylum-seekers awaiting clearance. The percentage of foreign-born is roughly equivalent to the highest percentage of immigrants the United States ever had in its history (on the eve of World War I). "

There it is, raw data; something I can verify or disprove. I am trying to learn about a subject, so I asked a question to help further my understanding. Fjordman took the time to help.

gideon said:

"I have the numbers, but they are not really the issue here. The issue is..."

...but you won't share.

gideon seems to contradict himself:

"The idea that something radical has happened in this country the last ten years is a very ignorant fantasy, spawned by extreme right propaganda."

"Ten years ago this country had just experienced a truly massive wave of refugees from the war in Yugoslavia. This is common knowledge and doesn't have to be proven."

So, we have a truly massive wave of refugees that is not a radical occurrence. Common knowledge, yet an ignorant fantasy.

I don't wish to see your reply, gideon. I asked a simple question, twice. Twice, you chose to deride others in the discussion instead of directly answering. You seem averse to hard facts.

Ten years ago, in 1996, there where almost no refugees coming to our bourders. There was a lull after the war. Three or four years earlier the numbers of refugees were ten times higher than in 1996, or even more. There is a difference between ten years ago and 14 years ago. You have to realize this to understand there is no contradiction.

How could Sweden have been a homogenous country in 1996 when several hundred thousand yugoslavian refugees hade arrived the previous years? It's impossible.

Statistics from the Swedish Immigration Bureau is hard facts. But knowledge of the war in Yugoslavia is even harder. You don't have to know the numbers to accept this.

Are the yugoslavians part of this "Eurabia" you are talking about? Do you have any friends in this group?

There is roughly one million people of foreign or mixed background in Sweden. Crown Princess Viktoria is one of them. Apart from our royalty, finns and norwegians are groups that falls into that category, as does their childen from mixed marriages with swedes. It is a very broad category. You can't seriously believe they are all arabs (i e fundamentalists and terrorists).

I think you should move on to write apocalyptic articles about your own countries instead of mine, who you obviously know nothing about. But the scorn from your fellow countrymen when you spread delusional ideas maybe discourages you?

I think you should move on to write apocalyptic articles about your own countries instead of mine, who you obviously know nothing about. But the scorn from your fellow countrymen when you spread delusional ideas maybe discourages you?

the immigration to sweden in 1960's was mostly from finland. in late 60's and early 70' approximately 40 000 thousand finns moved to sweden every year. There were more finns than immigrants from all the other countries together.

So sweden wasn't homogenous, because there were 500 000 finns working in there. and swedes had negative attitude towards immigrants and finnish immigrants especially. It is thought that those negative attitudes effectively encouraged integration and "when in rome"-mentality.

and something happened in the 80's, so that the press stopped writing negative things about immigrants and started showing them in positive light instead. also the amount of immigrants and refugees from 3rd world countries increased. at the same time the amount industrial jobs decreased, so many finns returned to finland, were standard of living had almost reached that in sweden. in the 80's also the finns in sweden began to form a minority identity and started to make demands to the state to have more rights to their own culture.

there are 450 000 first and second generation finnish immigrants living in sweden. many people tend to forget the finns when talking about the swedish immigration policy. Even though finns had more social problems than natives and were less educated and poorer they have now assimilated to great extend. it is also believed that they played important part in the economic growth of sweden. Sweden's finns are still the largest immigrant group in Sweden. and the city with highest percentage of immmigrants is not malmö, but haparanda with 35,1% finnish population.

I remember visiting Malmö and staying with a friend a few years ago and she showed me an invisible barrier. You cross a line between central Malmö and a part of the suburbs and suddenly you are living in a Stalinist nightmare with big blocks of buildings dropped from the sky on open fields. It's council estate zone, populated exclusively by immigrants. Turks, Russians, anyone not swedish.

Another friend has been living there for many years now, partnered with a swede and teaching. She is pretty much "integrated", if I may use that Orwellian word, and still complains occasionally about a certain amount of discrimination from the swedes. There was some news in school of a girl who was dating a muslim boy and they were the talk of the town.

I hear little criticism about capitalism in this blog and it upsets me. Europe has been recruiting cheap labour from poor countries for decades now and treating it like trash. Everyone's been doing it. It was Europeans who exploited and used available human resources like cheap fuel, just like they colonised and abused the rest of the world for centuries. And yet Europe still loves to promote itself as the birth of civilization and moral decency. It's as corrupt as any other place on earth, just got to Brussels or any national Parliament here.

Of course, half of the problem would be inexistent if we simply attacked Islam and Judaism like we attacked Christianity a century ago and showed religious belief to be superstition fed to morons and the nation-state as the seed of all fascism. But nobody wants to hear that, least of all americans, so I'll just go and brush my hair, look pretty, vote for Bush and read that Jenna Jameson biography.

Good god, it's as bad as I had feared. As a person of Swedish descent, I am horrified to see the nation of my people being destroyed like this by hideous barbarians. That's what "tolerance" will get you. I certainly do hope that the rest of Scandinavia will wake up and stop this wretched invasion.

How it affect you? Did you buy insurance? Did you buy mini note or bonds?

Who fault?

The top management of the Public listed company ( belong to "public" ) salary should be tied a portion of it to the shares price ( IPO or ave 5 years ).... so when the shares price drop, it don't just penalise the investors, but those who don't take care of the company.....If this rule is pass on, without any need of further regulation, all industries ( as long as it is public listed ) will be self regulated......